this may seem like a silly question, but...

Something I was wondering about is do your chickens stay in your yard...I want mine to be able to forage, but I rmemeber my grandpas chickens, they always kept them cooped up. Do they stay close to the coop or will they go down the road? Will they go into their coop at night on their own or will we have to shoo them in? I know that might seem like a strange question, but this is all new!

The easy one first. if you keep them locked in the coop for a while, they will come to think of it as home and return there every night to roost. I've got separate groups right now, split due to age differences. The adults go to their coop at least a half hour before sunset. The 9 week olds wait until the last second, just before dark to go in. But they all go in.

When you first let them out, say for a week or so, they will probably stay pretty close to the coop. But as they get comfortable being out and about, they tend to roam further. Mine usually stay within 400 feet of the coop, but part of that may be because of the layout of the land here. You might get some that will roam further. If you have fences, even if they can easily fly over the fence, they may tend to stay in the yard. Or you may have some that like to roam. A lot depends on your set-up and situation and the personality of your chickens.

I used to have three that liked to play in the road, a private gravel road with very little traffic. I ate the ringleader of that cabal. The others then stayed out of the road. They no longer had the ringleader to take them there.

It's not an easy one to answer because I don't think there is one asnswer for it.

How do they go into the neighbors yards ? Mine stay in our yard,we have 5 birds and they stay put, of course we have a fence . It's not a tall fence but it keeps them home lol. We let them roam all day, and at night they put them selves to bed.

Thanks for your answers. We are surrounded on 3 sides by woods, and the 4th side by a horse farm, so no close neighbors. I will be keeping a close eye on them, because we do have foxes and raccoons and I want to make sure they are safe...We have about 2 acres.